Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Trump feuds with PolitiFact for branding his misstatements '2015 Lie of the Year'

Presidential candidate and part-time Florida resident Donald Trump criticized PolitiFact, the fact-checking project run by the Tampa Bay Times, for awarding him its "2015 Lie of the Year" award.

PolitiFact says it checked 77 statements Trump made this year, and out of those, 76 percent were "Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire" on its Truth-O-Meter. Staff writers couldn't pick one inaccuracy for the award, so they "rolled them into one big trophy."

"Trump hasn't apologized or backtracked on his statements," PolitiFact says. "Instead, when challenged, he offers flimsy explanations and suggests he shouldn't be held accountable — or simply insists he's right."

On Monday after PolitiFact gave him the not-so-coveted award, Trump told an ABC News station that the Pulitzer-Prize winning site was a "dishonest," and later told Fox & Friends that the organization is "a totally left-wing group," PolitiFactreported.

"They are bad news as far as checking," Trump told Elisabeth Hasselbeck. "You can tell something 100 percent and they can make it out to a lie if you're a certain person."